Skeletons On The Zahara (31 page)

Hamet certainly knew Sidi Hashem. He had traveled in one of his caravans, a disaster to be sure. He answered with curt force and turned the tables, demanding the same information and inquiring by what authority the rider had stopped him and his slaves peacefully traveling on the road. It was a dangerous scenario Riley had grown all too familiar with on the high seas. The verbal sparring went on for a tense half hour. Finally, the riders allowed Hamet's company to pass.

When they were out of sight, Hamet's demeanor changed. He pushed his group relentlessly now, almost continually at a rack, with those on foot running to keep up. Finally he veered onto an open hilltop, where they stopped to rest. The view was both magnificent and significant. Far to the east, the peaks of the Anti-Atlas jutted into the blue sky; nearby, to the west and north, the ocean rippled darkly. With his mariner's eye, Riley soon made out what looked like a “high and distant island.” Pointing there, Hamet said, “There is Swearah, Riley.”

“How far is it?” asked the captain.

“Ten days, at our slow pace.” He did not need to add that that was barring any further interruptions by the consorts of Sidi Hashem.

The sailors rode with renewed vigor. Traveling into the night, they covered fifty miles, outdistancing Hassar with the women and children. They continued on until they came to a camp of Arabs, who fed them dried mussels and barley lhasa. Riley, in turn, attended to their sick, examining a woman whose breast he described as swollen to an “astonishingly large” size. With each breath, the woman groaned in pain, and he feared the breast would rupture. He prescribed a poultice of lhasa and instructed them to change it frequently “until the swelling should subside or burst.” The grateful woman gave him a drink of water and a handful of mussels and begged him to look at her brother's distended leg. Riley prescribed a “thick plaster of coarse salt to be bound round it,” and his patient immediately swore that he felt relief.

This assistance made Riley uneasy about creating a demand for his services. The Arabs in this camp already wanted to keep Horace and aggressively pursued a trade. Against the wishes of Hamet, Seid negotiated with them, agreeing to a deal to be finalized in the morning. Hamet, who had borne the stresses of his illness and the trail with impressive calm, was disgusted with his brother. He snapped at Seid angrily, warning him not to sell the boy.

In the middle of the night, Hamet awakened the sailors, warning them to be silent as they rose. “I suspected some roguery going on,” Riley wrote, “because we had never before started in the night.” Hamet did not bother with an explanation, and they stole away without waking anyone else, including the Arab they had picked up on the trail the preceding day, though they took his two camels. Heading deceptively to the southeast through a mountain pass, they had gone only half a dozen miles when they heard pounding hooves and the unmistakable clinking of spurs on stirrups. Hamet and his Arab companions, including Hassar's two men, unsheathed their guns, but they kept moving at a steady rate as the riders approached.

Four riders passed them in a blur on the right-hand side. They swept around in front, and forced them to a halt. Hamet and his men dismounted and dashed forward, instructing the Americans to stay with them. The sailors followed as fast as they could in the dark.

Though these were not the same men who stopped them the day before, the scene was similar. Neither side having overwhelming numbers, they squared off and shouted at each other, all the time appearing to be on the brink of a bloody fight. The riders' lieutenant denounced Hamet for breaching their code of hospitality and demanded to know his name. Hamet made the same demand of him. They became ensnarled in punctilio until each revealed his name, Hamet first, followed by his rival, Ali Mohammed. The two continued to exchange barbs and accusations, jockeying for the moral high ground, but the argument would not be settled by debate. While the morning light gained strength, so did Ali Mohammed's forces: his footmen caught up to the riders, and as their numbers grew, Hamet's tone softened. Finally, the Arab who had been with them the day before came running up breathlessly. “You stole my camels!” he denounced Hamet shrilly.

Hamet did not deny that the camels belonged to the man. In a low voice, he asked Ali Mohammed to step aside with him and pleaded his case. “It was a mistake made in the dark of night,” he argued. “I detest a robber and a thief. I am entirely innocent of intentionally driving off the man's camels. I am incapable of committing such an unworthy act. My character is all I have, and I will die before I let anyone accuse me of wrongdoing.”

Ali Mohammed's forces now outnumbered Hamet's by two to one, but Hamet's men stood their ground. According to Riley, Ali seemed satisfied by Hamet's profuse rebuttals but even more so by his courage. “I am your friend,” he told Hamet, “for you are a brave man.” Ali made excuses for Hamet and abruptly released the group, silencing his accuser.

Around noon, they reached a plain and headed east. As they rode, Seid fumed over the confrontation with the troops, knowing that the chips could easily have fallen the other way, and they might have lost all. Aware that a storm was brewing, Abdallah and Hassar's men split off to the north and were soon out of sight in the bushes. This hasty exit was to be their last, for, in a quirk of Riley's account, he never mentions them again. Hassar and his fair wife, Tamar, are likewise abandoned on a parallel course without so much as a curtain call.

The sailors trudged behind Hamet's large camel at a frustratingly slow pace over the hilly terrain, “for,” Riley said, “we were worn to the bones by our various and complicated sufferings.” Suddenly, Seid ordered the men to stop.

Glaring at his brother, Hamet told them to continue. They listened to Hamet and kept walking.

Furious, Seid dismounted. His resentment had been growing ever since they had arrived in Souss. Unnerved by already having faced two guards of the local warlords, he insisted again that he alone owned Horace and Savage. Now all his complaints and doubts boiled to the surface. He did not believe the miserable slave Riley had a friend in Swearah to ransom him. Seid had decided to take his slaves and dispose of them as he pleased, not according to his brother's overly ambitious plan. He seized Horace and Savage.

Hamet vaulted from his camel. Not only had Seid toyed with offers for the two Christians on several occasions, he had squabbled with Hamet over other things as well. Hamet had been forced to humor and coax him; now he rushed upon his younger brother, pulling him away from the two sailors. The brothers grappled, trying to throw each other to the ground. After a struggle, they fell down in a bitter embrace. Seid, larger and heavier than Hamet, was on top, but Hamet, who was quicker and more active, struggled with the intensity of an older brother who would rather die than lose to his junior sibling. He fought himself free. They both sprang to their feet and went for their guns. Each retired a few paces, unsheathed his musket, and furiously primed and cocked it. Almost at the same time, they raised them and aimed them at each other's chest. “They were not more than ten yards asunder,” Riley recalled, “and both must have fallen dead, had they fired.”

Riley himself froze. He could not force himself to scramble to safety. “My God, have mercy on these unfortunate brothers, I pray thee, for our sakes,” he cried out. “Suffer them not to spill each other's blood.” As he shouted this, Hamet pulled the triggers of his double-barreled musket.

He fired into the air. Then he tossed down his gun and pulled open his haik, baring his chest. “I am unarmed,” he called defiantly. “Fire! Your brother's heart is ready to receive your shot; take your vengeance on your protector.”

Instead, Seid turned on Horace and Savage, who were quivering nearby. “Move and I will kill you,” he threatened.

Hamet rushed over to Horace and sent him toward Riley. Hamet offered Clark to Seid in the boy's place. Seid refused, at the same time pushing Savage to the ground, clamping him there with a foot on his thigh. “Take Burns too,” Hamet said. “Two men for one.” Hamet ordered Riley to take Horace and follow the camels. “Savage, go too,” he barked. Seid leveled his gun at Savage's head, telling him he would blow it off. Hamet ignored his brother. “Go, Savage,” he said, pointing toward the others, who were already moving to the south.

Savage rolled free and bolted. When the second mate reached Horace and Riley, Hamet commanded them to stop. The brothers sat down on the ground. Hamet again proposed giving Burns and Clark to Seid for Horace. Seid shook his head. He would keep the slaves he had bought. “You will not separate him from his father,” Hamet stated. “I have sworn to it.”

“Then I will kill him,” Seid vowed angrily, rising up and seizing Horace. Before Hamet could react, Seid lifted the boy into the air by his chest as easily as if he were a sack of grain. In a single motion, he flipped him over and threw him headfirst onto the ground. The crack of Horace's skull broke the silence like gunfire.

Believing the blow had killed the boy, Riley sank to the ground. “Go, Riley,” Hamet bellowed, waving him away from Seid, who glowered nearby. Weak and disoriented, Riley rose, his emotions out of control. “I cannot leave the boy,” he said. Then he staggered on a few steps.

His rage over, Seid backed away, believing he had foolishly destroyed his own property. Hamet rushed to Horace and gently pulled him to a sitting position. In a tender tone, he said to him, “Go to Riley.” But Horace could neither speak nor get up. Riley went to the boy and held him in his arms. Horace's breath came fast and shallow. He moaned. Riley examined the ground around him, which was covered in stones, except where Horace's head had struck.

Seid and Hamet renewed the quarrel. Before it could heat up again properly, some strangers came into sight. The two brothers were suddenly brought to their senses. If they fought each other, they agreed, they would surely lose all. Hurrying on to avoid the strangers, the brothers decided to find a village where they could rest and seek a solution to their dispute. Riley cradled Horace on a camel as they went. At the top of a rise, they spotted a walled village and made for it. Entering through the open gate, they passed nearly to the other side before meeting an old man, an olive-skinned Moor who spoke some Spanish and whom Riley described as “respectable looking.” The Moor welcomed the two Arabs while examining the ragged sailors. He could see that the boy was in need of care. Directing the visitors to a shady spot by a wall, the old man ordered his women to prepare food.

Two large bowls of boiled barley lhasa were soon set before them, one for the brothers and one for the sailors. “Kul, Rais,” the old man said to Riley. Eating with their hands, the sailors filled their stomachs as fast as they could. Not until World War II, when concentration camp victims were nursed back to health, did scientists and doctors learn that the rapid intake of even normal amounts of food can incapacitate or even kill people who have long been kept on starvation diets. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the stomach but the small intestine that shrinks and must be allowed to reconstitute itself slowly by handling limited amounts of food. The sailors gobbled as much as they could as fast as they could, and they would pay for it later.

Afterward, on the Moor's advice, Hamet hired a guide, a sturdy young man named Bo-Mohammed with broad cheeks, hooded eyes, and a closely cropped beard to accompany them to another village. Not only would his familiarity with the terrain be helpful, Hamet hoped his presence would inspire the goodwill of his neighbors. He might also prove useful if Seid grew rebellious again.8

On the way to the nearby village, they discovered two bubbling springs beneath a rock shelf. The sailors drank the water but again suffered from crippling stomach cramps. This time it was not only dysentery that tormented them. They had gorged with such greed on the lhasa that some of them could hardly breathe, especially Savage. The group stopped in the dunes, waiting for the cover of dusk to resume their trek as well as allowing the sailors time to recuperate. Then they continued on to the intended village, a geographical watershed of sorts: they had reached the end of the land of tents and would see no more.

Amid the mud-walled houses, a pack of barking dogs besieged them until they were hushed by a stern-looking old man named Sidi Mohammed, who led the men to the walls of his compound. He told them to rest there while he gave orders for the preparation of supper. Then he had a mat placed near his walls and sat there beside Hamet and Seid. Soon he beckoned Riley to join them.

Bo-Mohammed of Shtuka

(from Sequel to Riley's Narrative, 1851)

Mohammed lit a lamp and placed the glare of the light on Riley so that he could study his face. The old man peppered the captain with the litany of questions he had come to expect, but here, answering made Riley tense. Before, he had been playing an unreal game, in an unreal place, under unimaginable conditions, where accountability was a moot point. Now they were approaching reality. Mohammed was a knowledgeable man who was familiar with Swearah and claimed to have visited the consuls. Riley worried that the old man would uncover his lie.

The captain breathed a sigh of relief when the arrival of hot loaves of bread brought the interview to an end. The sailors had not tasted this staple since the wreck, but despite their enthusiasm, they found they could swallow only a few bites of the heavy barley loaves after eating so much lhasa earlier in the day. Following the meal, the brothers washed their hands and feet and continued to consult Mohammed. When they had agreed to a plan, they called Riley over; Hamet told him that in the morning Hamet and Mohammed would go to Swearah. By traveling rapidly on mules night and day, they would reach the town in three days. Seid and Bo-Mohammed would guard the sailors and provide them with as much khobs, bread, and lhasa as they could eat.

“I have fought for you, have suffered hunger, thirst, and fatigue to restore you to your family, for I believe Allah is with you,” Hamet told Riley. "I have paid away all my money on your word alone.